


One More Time, with Feeling

by orphan_account



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Relationship Conflict, Unfortunate Implications, Xing, mentions of Edwin and Ling Fan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 09:02:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1144100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end the Elric brothers laughed over the irony: The traveller had settled to write books on alchemy while juggling two boisterous children blessed with Rockbell rockheadedness and Elric recklessness, and the settler had taken to travelling between Amestris and Xing for the remainder of his life. It came, really, with having two homes.</p><p>-------------------------------------------------------</p><p>A bird could love a fish, but where would they live?</p>
            </blockquote>





	One More Time, with Feeling

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: "Third song on your shuffle + AlMei."
> 
> Therefore, enjoy "One More Time With Feeling" as sung by Regina Spektor.
> 
> Technically speaking, "One More Time With Feeling" was the third song on my sister's shuffle, but since the third song on mine was "Crayons Could Melt On Us For All I Care", I'm pretty sure that the prompter will forgive me mine sins.
> 
> The Si Wong Desert was stolen wholeheartedly from Avatar: The Last Airbender. If you've seen the show and know what the second season episode, "The Desert", was about, then you can more or less guess at the mental soundtrack for this fic.
> 
> Unbeta'd/unedited/etc. Enjoy at your own risk. Thank you for reading!

They went around the world and back again. Edward collected alchemy souvenirs in a massive box and sent back racy letters once a week and returned home with bright eyes and a fervent need to start _writing_. Alphonse cultivated memories like tender shoots of bamboo and wrote home every night and returned home with bright eyes and leaden limbs.

In the end the Elric brothers laughed over the irony: The traveller had settled to write books on alchemy while juggling two boisterous children blessed with Rockbell rockheadedness and Elric recklessness, and the settler had taken to travelling between Amestris and Xing for the remainder of his life. It came, really, with having two homes.

The first, a combination workshop/house/rapidly becoming increasingly chaotic library of alchemical literature out on the outskirts of Rush Valley like a lighthouse beacon of hope for all entering the town. _Rockbell Replacements & Repair_, read the sign in massive blue-gold lettering, followed by a messy scrawl of _Home of Edward Elric-Rockbell, Alchemy Researcher_. In typical Edward fashion, the bottom of the sign drew attention with its lurid colours and spike-skull motif.

The second, the pink-toned Chang quarters of the imperial capital, Xijing, with the extensive garden whose creation he had overseen and the cat sanctuary whose occupants would follow him or the resident Princess around the palace with the air of obedient children, all stiff tails curled into question marks and claws daintily retracted. The Xingese would touch him gently or lift up infants to be blessed by his uncanny resemblance to the Golden Sage. If only, he remarked to May over tea, her people understood just how poorly he knew alkahestry.

For now, she answered, and he contemplated the cup he held with both hands.

She, too, had two homes, both of which he visited, just as she visited his. The first resided in Xijing amid the noblemen continuously griping about the Emperor’s series of minute alterations that little-by-little chiselled away the ancient corruption and sculpted a new nation built upon tradition and progress at once, amid the new alkahetrists learning under her careful tutelage, amid the fragile court politics that required her deft hand where Ling’s influence and Lan Fan’s physical prowess failed. The second lay with the wind rustling the bamboo forests and the rice paddies carving her people’s resilience into the countryside and the barefoot children who ran behind her with sweets and scraps of pink in their hands. In the first she was Princess Chang May, heir presumptive to the Empire of Xing, representative of the Chang Clan and all that came with it. In the second she was May, just May, the Princess who slept on mats and ate rice soup and travelled to every village at least once a year to help her people, to heal those who needed it and to send to Xijing those who could themselves be taught to heal. To learn in the capital and then to return to their villages with wealth to share.

He felt more himself in Rush Valley laughing with his golden-haired niblings and in the Chang meadows braiding flowers into her hair musky with the scent of sex. She wrote him the same in her myriad of letters.

And yet the home where their paths most often crossed shined the gold of the Yao and the scarlet of the Emperor. Where he was the special guest. The Amestrisian. The Xerxian. Perhaps, if he was lucky, the foreign consort of the beloved Princess Chang. For as long as they lived in Xing, they could not marry: “ _Under the law_ ,” he wrote to his brother, currently working on publishing Alphonse’s research into chimaeras in a form presentable to Amestris, “ _any man she married would replace her as head of the Clan and as heir to the throne._ ”

The thick envelope that returned spilled its contents of photographs. His niece’s first original array, an explosive one that resulting in the Rockbell-Elrics going roofless for a week. His nephew’s interest in motos and compatible automail attachments born of Aunt Ninya’s fixation. His twenty-five-year-old sister-in-law swelling tenderly with her third child.

Children.

She’d mentioned them before. Always sparing a moment, a smile, a hug for any child she came across in her travels. Relishing the photographs and constantly requesting Winry send more. Resting with her lover after a blissful nap in the garden-sanctuary, stroking one of the new kittens and absentmindedly murmuring about how it would be to be a parent.

To be a mother.

To be a father, a thought that wriggled its way into the empty spaces between alchemy equations and complicated research plans he considered on the lengthy train ride across the Si Wong Desert. And thank Ling for that at the least. This way, the Emperor had said cheerfully over Lan Fan’s embarrassed hands-over-face, it was that much easier to skip out on work and run off to Amestris on a little retreat. Heheh.

Yet he trekked between the two halves of his life, between his brother and Winry and niblings and family, between his lover and Ling and Lan Fan and other family, just as she trekked between the two halves of hers.

“ _If we had a child_ ,” he wrote, “ _I would fear May bearing it alone. Not that she could not do so, but that what would be the point of being a father if you weren’t_ there _to be one? I know how much you dislike our father. Would May and I take turns during the time that I stay in Amestris and she with her people? Would I only be a father half of the time? Three-quarters? Would one of us simply assume responsibility for the children? Though if that were the case, the ensuing argument would be devastating. We would both want them at all times._ ”

His brother mailed an exquisite response from Winry that he distilled to _follow your heart_. Edward’s own reply was markedly curt: “ _I’ve been thinking about extending our vacations in Xing_.”

But his brother had a family, and Winry had a job, and his niblings deserved a childhood where they could play and explore and understand their world. Brief respites in Xing, yes. To broaden horizons and relish in the opulence of the Xingese culture. And yet _extending our vacations_ , living there, incessantly journeying back and forth like a migratory bird proved something he could not ask his brother to do. Did not _want_ his brother to do.

Instead he frowned as he knelt in the waiting room of the Chang quarters. Her _chi_ probed at his long before her arrival, and by the time she entered in a flourish of rosy pink, a smile played at the corners of his lips.

What if, she asked him once, she could not take this anymore. What if she could not deal with his absence for six months of the year. What if she could not deal with her desire to raise children, either hers or adopted. What if.

What if, he asked her once, _he_ could not take this anymore. What if _he_ could not deal with _her_ absence for six months of the year. What if he could not deal with his desire to raise children, either his or adopted. What if.

She rested in his lap while he read to her. Sometimes, the latest developments in alchemy, and she would supply those of alkahestry. Sometimes, the mythology and fairy tales and wives’ stories of Amestris and its surrounding countries, and she would add in those of Xing and _its_ surrounding countries. She said, This is how we would read to our children. He told her the story of an ancient goddess of the harvest whose daughter spent her life cleaved in two, half of it in the underworld, half of it with her mother. When the daughter and mother reunited, spring sprung, and with it, life. Yet when the daughter returned to her now-husband, the heart-broken mother mourned in winter white. Today, he explained, her legacy lived on in the word _cereal_.

 _Serial_ , she echoed, like a series, like vaguely connected sequences of memories arbitrarily broken up into same-size segments, like what the daughter’s life became. What their lives had become.

Six months together stealing moments in-between their respective duties to the Emperor. Six months apart exchanging letters across the divide and relaxing away from their respective duties even as they missed one another.

Idly he wondered whether the daughter of the goddess, too, preferred the time with her mother, as the story silently assumed. Or if the daughter looked forward to winter’s frigid edge and her husband’s warm embrace.

Something would give. He could sense the tension growing with every passing year. Four niblings, now. Xing baking from rough clay to smooth ceramic. Each day Ling added a perfunctory coat of paint, no longer quite necessary so much as filling in the seams, prettifying the nation, and each day he shared his plans to leave Xing behind and travel the road a normal, mortal man with a normal, mortal wife by his side. At thirty years old, he mentioned, he deserved a break, and at thirty-one, so did his vassal. Alphonse and May congratulated Lan Fan with a surprise party in the early morning. He noticed how drawn the vassal’s face had grown, how she used a knocked-over mug to apologise in a hollow voice, how her hooded eyes concealed a strange grief. Neither the night-blue grief applied to the self nor the red-hot grief applied to a lover or a friend. But a grief grey as the coming storm. As a dog straining against its chain, ears flicked back, growls giving way to whimpers against the pounding rain and howling wind. Lan Fan bid them kiss one another, as a present to her, and they did, ineffectually smashing their teeth together, tongues slipping out of control into choking hazards, fingers ripping through ornate silk from the strength of desperation.

A last time for everything.

“ _I heard Auntie May’s going to be the new Empress!_ ” Winry’s envelopes included letters from the elder children. He realised with a savage cymbal crash in his chest that he hadn’t been there for the birth of their first grandchild. Grandchild. Eighteen years since he first arrived in Xing. “ _Congratulate her for me! And tell her to visit again because I miss her quite a lot and I want to see her again like the beautiful Empress she will be._ ”

The day of the coronation he caught her in her private chambers. He stood in the doorway, neither here nor there, one foot within and one foot without. She met his gaze, and her irises glinted in that stubbornness with which he had fallen in love. For all of her love, none would back down. None would give. None would be.

He could not throw away his family, and she could not abandon her people. She had been raised a Chang, had been raised a Princess, had been raised an Empress. The Xingese built their Empire upon duty, honour, and sacrifice. He screamed: And what about him? Never settling down in Amestris or in Xing? Never becoming an Amestrisian doctor as he had wanted to, never truly bringing alkahestry to Amestris as he had wanted to, never even starting a family as he had wanted to. She screamed: And what about her? Did he think that she enjoyed ignoring him, enjoyed the perpetual exhaustion of actively fighting those nobles intent on reverting the law enjoyed not being able to have a family? And wasn’t _she_ his family? Didn’t _she_ matter? Didn’t _they_ matter?

He screamed: _Didn’t_ she matter? _Didn’t_ he matter? Why _didn’t_ they matter?

She screamed: Because two broken souls could not equate hundreds of thousands. Because the responsibility of caring for two or three children could not offset the responsibility of caring for an entire nation. Because the hole of her heart could not compare to the whole of her Xing.

 _Her_ Xing.

She threw her hairbrush at the mirror and he watched their relationship shatter into a thousand silver shards.

He sat in the front row at the coronation while they tattooed her back with heavenly sigils he recognised as an overly elaborate, flourished version of the generic alkahestry array. In the centre they imprinted the _da xiong mao_ crest of the Chang. By the time the guests returned to the palace proper for the festivities, the yellow had transformed into pink, the Yao _feng_ into the panda.

In the fluent Xingese he had learned over the past two decades he toasted her in the Amestrisian tradition and blessed her and her reign in the manner of the Golden Sage.

She thanked him kindly, but she kept her gaze fixed on a distant point somewhere above his. Reminding her people that she was their Empress. That he was beneath her. That he was free to leave.

His brother welcomed him to the bustling Rockbell-Elric household. Their eldest had gone on to specialise in the alchemy of power generation and worked as a civil engineer. Their second had followed in his mother’s footsteps. The third had recklessly opened the Gate of Truth to learn her uncle’s clapping method of transmutation and run off to work as a State Alchemist. The fourth had listened carefully to xir uncle’s explanation of alkahestry and practised a hybrid form that reminded Alphonse of the sort he had seen, however briefly, in the notes of the scarred Ishvalan’s brother.

He inserted himself easily in his relatives’ lives with that quiet determination that delineated his behaviour from Edward’s. He demonstrated Xingese automail to Winry, conversed with Paninya over hot tea and Den’s puppies’ puppies, happily assisted with a planning of a new power plant that would bring life to Resembool, coached his eldest nephew in how to win a boy’s heart, bridged the gaping abyss between his runaway niece and her family, explored the art of transcribing alchemy into reverse alkahestry circles and vice versa, edited his brother’s latest book on alchemical philosophy. _All is One, One is All: On Life, the Universe, and Everything_.

He reached the chapter on love and skipped to the next.

At length Ling and Lan Fan showed up on their doorstep, dusty and grinning, all travelled-out and ready for a warm break. Between them they clasped the hands of their adopted daughter, and Alphonse retired early to bed. The next morning Lan Fan awoke him with a blaze of _chi_ and a hand-written folded paper in her messy Amestrisian.

After her grandfather’s death, she told him quietly, she built wings around the courtyard of her heart to protect herself from pain, and it took a certain someone some twenty years to reopen the wound and let it heal again, no longer twisted or strained or forced but natural and smooth and beautiful.

The letter contained a single quote: “ _The stitches are all out, but the scars are healing wrong_.” When he unfolded the page, a photograph of May alighted in his lap. May hugging Xiao-Mei and lazing in a mountain of cats upon grass and laughing. Laughing.

He felt his heart swell and burst and bleed inside him; the painful fluid filled the cavity in his chest. Lan Fan held him, trembling against her shoulder, until his tears were spent.

His brother and Winry embraced him like the first reunion in Resembool and he assured them it wouldn’t, couldn’t be the last. Her eyes shone wetly; Edward hugged him tightly enough he became a fragile body fresh from the white of the Gate once more, still barely on crutches and learning over again how to walk.

The trip over the Si Wong had never been so short.

He waited patiently for an audience with the Empress and in the process discovered that she could as many questions from the people as possible, setting aside a block of six hours a day to hear the voices of Xing. To the questioning attendant he gave his name as _Aru_ in the Xingese pronunciation thereof. When he entered the Empress’s meeting room he heard the silence fall around him.

May kept her gaze fixed on that distant point somewhere above his. He bowed, and she inquired of the comment or request or conflict burning on his tongue.

He smiled.

Yes, he said, a conflict, and a problem, and a wound above all, for he had left the love of his life.

The Empress dismissed the servants and vassals and bodyguards. She lifted herself slowly from her throne, the elaborate robes and luxurious hair accessories jingling noisily. She quit the layered gowns, quit the bells and gold strewn into her hair, quit the exquisite shoes fitted to her imperial feet. May launched herself across the royal room, the pads of her barefoot slapping the tile, her hair streaming out behind her in unwieldy coarse black, Xiao-Mei gripping her shoulders. Dropping to her knees at the final moment, she slid into his waiting arms and threw hers around his neck.

He came back, she whispered.

He would always come back, he whispered back, for her.

She pressed her face, hot and moist, into his neck as she reminded him that she was still the Empress and that that could not change.

He didn’t think to stop his tears.

“I know,” he murmured, gently, into her ear. “And we’ll work through it. But I don’t want to lose you. I love you.”

“You’re an idiot.” He felt the curve of her smile on his skin. “I love you too.”


End file.
